Honest Conversations in the Energy Crossroads by Andy Ramos

When we visited the Signal Peak coal mine, located 15 miles south of Roundup, we spoke with a coal miner. At first, the conversation barely scratched the surface. You could sense he was holding back, clearly not feeling entirely comfortable. It wasn’t until we asked a question about policy and the future of coal mining that he responded with, “Well, are you a Republican or Democrat?” In response, we said something along the lines of, “Given your experience in the field, what’s your honest take, with political ideology aside?” At that moment, he seemed to feel a wave of relief. He realized we were there to simply understand him and his experiences and that’s when the floodgates opened. The preexisting barriers vanished, and what followed was an hour-long conversation where he shared his views honestly and unapologetically. He later thanked us for being genuinely interested and for coming in with an open mind, rather than with preconceived negative connotations about the industry.

One common theme that has emerged in nearly every conversation is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You won’t have one form of energy without the other. The coal miner explained that without coal, there’s no cement and without cement, there’s no concrete for the wind turbine foundations. For the Judith Gap wind farm just outside of Harlowton, 50,000 tons of concrete was used to build 90 turbines. After touring a cement plant, we now fully understand just how energy-intensive that process is. In other words, nothing comes free in the energy world—there’s always a cost.

The big question is, what’s next? No American wants to live in a polluted country with dirty air, and people want to keep skiing all year. Yet, so many solutions proposed by politicians and activists are wildly impractical and have lost the middle ground. They spend years pushing radical ideas, like we can fix the roof while a hurricane is tearing the house apart, making it seem pointless to even try. But if everything’s already falling apart, what’s the point of trying to fix it? When people keep hearing that the world is going to melt in five years only to be told the same thing five years later, they stop listening. The constant doomsday warnings lose their weight, and people check out instead of helping out. An example of a radical and impractical proposal is to look at the electric vehicle mandate. Good luck telling Americans, who live in a country founded on freedom, that they can only drive a certain type of car. It simply won’t happen and people need to stop worrying about these radical policies and instead focus on more tangible goals.

Just this morning (6/25), Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, stated that only 2 percent of the power on the PJM grid, which serves 65 million Americans across 13 states, comes from wind or solar. Over 70 percent comes from burning fossil fuels. A far more realistic and impactful strategy would be to mandate that only 60 percent of our grid’s power comes from fossil fuels. This is a practical, tangible, and measurable solution where the impact can be clearly seen through numbers. That’s the kind of approach that can meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions without forcing people to live in ways that go against the values of a country built on freedom.

What these past two weeks have shown is that real change doesn’t come from shouting the loudest, but from listening. Every form of energy is connected, each relying on the other in ways most people don’t even realize. There’s no free lunch in energy. But through honest conversations with these hard-working individuals, we can start to build a path forward that leaves behind unrealistic agendas and causes change.